SDCC Hall H & More Will Soon Be Streamed Online

Big news about the annual San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) has just hit. For the first time ever the SDCC will stream presentations in the famous Hall H, Ballroom 20 and other locales. There is one little snag though: the stream won’t be live.

According to /film, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Comic-Con HQ, Comic-Con International’s new SVOD (streaming video on demand) platform, Seth Laderman stated:

“We’re going to be working with every single studio, every single panel host to be able to take the content and put it on our platform. We’re not going to be live streaming anything because we really don’t want to take away that experience of people who are the first to see and be there for it, but we can put things up shortly after.”

That means never having to miss mind-blowingly awesome occurrences like this.

Of course the big issue is how to keep events like Hall H exclusive since many studios have a specific marketing roadmap in mind that does not include global access to highly valuable information, which is traditionally only available within the confines of a convention room. This could include making the panel discussions in Hall H available for streaming but not necessarily the exclusive film footage, which is a huge draw to the event. Basically, it will boil down to the studios themselves regarding the decision to make footage available and when, if at all.

Laderman added:

“Because a lot of these studios have their marketing plans and how they want to control their assets. We’re really just here as a conduit to be able to help promote everyone, similar to what Comic-Con is, so whatever’s best for them will be good for us.”

While it could be very disappointing for the millions not able to attend events like SDCC it makes sense to safeguard exclusivity to some of its most attractive aspects. Otherwise, if the information is so readily available without investing money in travel, hospitality and admission then why even have the event? That would spell certain doom for smaller studios, artists and merchants who rely heavily on cons for income and exposure. Not to mention, it would be a huge blow to the local economies of host cities like San Diego, which benefit in a very big way from the influx of visitors to its convention center area every summer.

Another very cool feature of Comic-Con HQ will be the ability to show footage from cons long past, including those that occurred long before everyone jumped on board the con-train in the past 10 years or so.

“They’ve been recording content for 40 years now,” Laderman said. “We have tapes that are like Betamax from 30 years ago so we’re in the process of digitizing everything right now and seeing what the pieces of content [are] but the goal is really to be able to enjoy the history of Comic-Con and be able to provide that content for the audience.”

Comic-Con HQ will hit the ground running on May 7 on web browsers and mobile devices. In the future they also hope to make the service available on streaming devices such as Roku, Apple TV, etc.

Denise Heard-Bashur

<p>Managing editor for GeekFeed.com living in the desolation of the west Texas desert. Proud mom, photo editor by day, former film major, MCU maven. Founder of the Free Snowpiercer & Free Loki campaigns. Also hung up on LOTR, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Outlander, Friends, and cinema in general. Good, bad…it’s all awesome. I’m a firm believer that if you haven’t read the book yet, see the movie first. Saves on tons of disappointment and spoilers. SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!</p>